FINAL PROJECT

Camera Mount 360

Since starting FabAcademy, I came across many ideas that I though would be feasible. However, over the past 6 months I have realized the limitation and importance of design and management of any project in the realm of manufactoring and prototyping. It is relatively easy to think about any idea no matter how far fetched, and the technology does exist to bring it to fruition, but it requires time, research, knowledge and management. Many of which I was not fully ready to approach. The more I learned the more I realized how complicated it could get and as much as I wanted to undertake bold projects, the more I knew the more limited it seemed when it actually came down to it. I have joined FabAcademy to learn this afterall. So for my final project I decided to finally go with something relatively simple, yet includes most of the skills I have acquired during this course.

The Idea

The idea started from camera mounts that were attached to the car. It actually sprung from a personal experience where I took a video of a scenic route that overlooked a valley. However, when I watched the video again it seemed very limited with the camera always pointing towards the front of the car, blocking every view with each driving corner. The video was taken with a GoPro camera. And since there already is a platform created by GoPro itself to fully control the camera wirelessly, I decided to combine this with a physical dimension that would allow the camera to rotate 360 degrees and tilt up to 90 degrees. The idea was to connect to the physical aspect via bluetooth to not interfere with the cameras wifi so that you could create great shots while keeping track of it on its individual application in a smartphone. The theory of concept was to have a compact mechanism that is independently powered (battery) to be controlled by a small remote that would attach to the smart phone and draw its power from it. And then controlling the angles of the camera with a joystick.

Prototype

The approach I chose to undertake was to figure out the electronics or nervous system of this machine as everything else would follow. When the electronic part is figured out it would be a matter of how to combine these and conrol them while providing support and efficiency where needed and some aestethics to make it more attractive in a way.

I first started by aquiring the probable and required electrical components:

• Which was later upgraded to 2 4 AAA battery holder aligned in series providing 12V as it was half the size and weight of the UPS battery.(4$ excluding batteries)

Once the electrical components were gathered it was time to create my first duct tape prototype. Although in my case it was an elastic prototype as duct tape wasnt available at the time and place I decided to do it. Still it achieves the purpose of seeing it function and help elaborate what the design might look like.





The idea seemed clear after the first prototype and it was time to start designing the actual mount.

Development

• Design
• I started the design on Fusion 360 First thing I did was to re-design or copy the actual components such as the battery pack, motor, and servo as they were key components and would be part of the core of this machine. I decided to use ball bearings to decrease the friction while using the as supports. I had one large one for the motor controlling the pan chassis and 2 small ones with a rod in between that would be controlled by the servo and support the weight of the camera. The rest had to fit the other components and be aestethically acceptable. Although before starting with the design I had imagined something much better designed. When it came to the actual design process it limited me in some ways. But I tried my best to have it done as a market available product.
  
  I have used almost all the skills acquired in design during FabAcademy for this project
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 3D Printing
• Most of the parts included in my design were 3D printed as it was the most efficient was of manufacturing them. To 3D print I used Cura to Slice the 3D components. Keeping in mind that time is of the essence, I had to adjust the options
• First I chose CPE to have a nice finish and a slightly flex material to be able to have the bearings fit in smoothly without affecting the 3D printed parts and PLA for the other parts such as the motor and pan chassis holder and the cover of the mount
• First for the long prints I chose the fast option which takes away from the finishing but saves at least 5 hours of priniting in some cases simply by adjusting the layer height and speed of the print





• Then it was the Brim which is an addition to the base layer that helps with the adhesion of the part to the heated plate and therefore keeping the part firmly in place.





• And finally the supports that need to be generated to ensure a precise print for some aspects of each component that might be sitting on an angle or a slightly weak point in comparison to the object orientation on the build plate





• Some other components that were 3D printed







• Once the files were sliced and Gcode generated, they were uploaded to the 3D printers.











• Laser Cutting
Although in this case specifically, as the choice of material and manufacturing approach plays a big role in project management. I wanted to make all the parts 3D printed as it was the best way to go about it for what is required. Howver since we needed to use more than one manufacturing technology, I decided to use Laser cutting to do the front and back panels of the remote that were held together with the 3D printed remote contour.




• For this process I exported the inner sketch of the contour which was made to fit the PCB inside as DXF format, onto CorelDraw, and finally to the Epilog Fusion Laser cutter
• I used 2.5 mm Red Acrylic board to do these cuts





• Circuit Boards PCB
• To design the new PCB, I chose Eagle software and followed the design of the Satchakit which uses an ATMEGA328p and know I need 4 Signal pins for the inputs and outputs and their respective VCC and GND.
• Now we need to identify which components should be taken into consideration to have a functional PCB
• Reset Button: for the reset of the board similar to the reset on the Arduino.
• Reset Pin before the capacitor: used for ISP programming.
• Reset Pin after capacitor: used for programing with an FTDI cable.
• Capacitors between VCC and GND: Referred to as decoupling capacitors which are used to supress high frequency noise in power supply signals. Basically keeping the voltage constant.
• LEDs: For debugging purposes, added between GND and VCC to confirm the board is powered and another between the reset Pin and GND to know when programs are uploaded.
• Crystal: used to generate clock pulses required for the synchronization of all the internal operations.
• Now coming to the actual design of the PCB, I used the Eagle software which had a final design that is shown below:







• Once the design is complete, Export the file in PNG format and open it on GIMP which is used to generate the inner and outer traces to mill the PCB. The inner traces should look like the following:





• Once the GIMP photos have been generated, inner and outer traces. Go to Fabmodules to generate the .rml code for the specific milling machine that would be used (Roland MDX-40 in this case). To know exactly how to do so go through the previous weeks to know the exact step by step process.
  PCB milling steps
• Once the PCB is milled it is time to move on to the next step, Soldering.
• Have the components ready and set up a safe working space to the this step.
• The following components were used in this case:
• 1 - Atmega328p
• 1 - 16 MHZ Crystal
• 2 - 18pF capacitors
• 2 - 100 nF capacitor
• 1 - 10uF capacitor
• 1 - 1uF capacitor
• 2 - SMD LEDs
• 2 - 499 Ohm Resistors
• 1 - 10k Ohm Resistor
• 1 - Push Button
• 3 - 0 Ohm Resistor
• 22 - Pinheaders



• I Made the connections in the board to the MCU according to the datasheet of the Atmega328p ( Atmega328p-Datasheet )



• After the soldering process, your PCB should look something like the following: (Note: I added a jumper cable because I experienced some issues with the power distribution and a 0 Ohm resistor connecting the VCCs coming out of the microprocessor pins 4 and 6 trying to resolve the power issue and it did)





• Now that the PCB is ready, the next step is to program it.
• The following steps should be taken:
1. Connect the Arduino UNO to the PC.
2. Select the right port and the Arduino UNO board under tools.
3. Under >File >Examples, find and open 'ArduinoISP' sketch.
4. Upload the sketch to Arduino.
5. Disconnect the Arduino from PC.
6. Connect your PCB with the Arduino in the following manner:
• 5V VCC and GND to respective prgramming pins on the PCB
• Pin 10 to RST Pin
• Pin 11 to MOSI Pin
• Pin 12 to MISO Pin
• Pin 13 to SCK Pin
7. Connect Arduino to the PC again.
8. Select the 'Arduino/Genuino UNO board' and the 'Arduino as ISP' programmer.
9. Click >Tools >Burn Bootloader.





10. After the bootloader is successfully done, connect the FTDI cable to program your PCB as if it was an Arduino.
12. The FTDI connections to this specific PCB pins of the AtMEGA 328p used are as follows:
    
    GND to GND
    
    VCC to 5V
    
    Tx to Rx
    
    Rx to Tx
    
    RST to the reset pin after the capacitor
    
    
    
13. This board was made during the Input Devices weekly assignment. Although it had a different purpose it can still perform the task as the Relay module is still included the only difference was the servo replaced the crash sensor and the other CS is used to power the HC-05 bluetooth module.
• Following the same process I designed another PCB that would be embedded in the remote. After many tests I was not able to accurately send commands through bluetooth while using the joystick. And as time was not on my side so I decided to improvise and use buttons instead.









• This PCB contains the same components as the previous one only the input/output pins are removed and 4 new buttons have been added with a resistor each
• Unfortunately due to project mismanagement I left the Remote PCB till the last day and the milling machine had issues and was not connecting to our PCs due to driver problems and I was not able to mill it. So since I already had one PCB done for the final project I just went on and used an Arduino to be able to control the machine wirelessly.
• Programing

In this case there 2 stages for programming. First is the connection between the two bluetooth modules and then programming both PCBs one to send the command input from buttons and the other to receive the commands and control the outputs

• Connecting the bluetooth modules
• First you need to make sure you either have 2 HC-05 modules or 1 HC-05 and 1 HC-06. This is because the HC-05 can be master and slave whereas the HC-06 can only be a slave.
• To have them communicate with each other you need to set them up on the arduino or through an FTDI cable and access the AT commands where you specify which is the slave and which is the master, Baud rate, and serial number where it would start looking to pair as soon as it is turned on
• For this step I used this page on instructables to achieve this. I did it using an FTDI cable as it makes the process much more efficient.



#include <SoftwareSerial.h> SoftwareSerial BTSerial(0, 1); // RX | TX void setup() { pinMode(9, OUTPUT); // this pin will pull the HC-05 pin 34 (key pin) HIGH to switch module to AT mode digitalWrite(9, HIGH); Serial.begin(9600); Serial.println("Enter AT commands:"); BTSerial.begin(38400); // HC-05 default speed in AT command more } void loop() { // Keep reading from HC-05 and send to Arduino Serial Monitor if (BTSerial.available()) Serial.write(BTSerial.read()); // Keep reading from Arduino Serial Monitor and send to HC-05 if (Serial.available()) BTSerial.write(Serial.read()); }



• Sender
• For the sender code I allocated each button to send a letter through serial communication as in L R and U D left, right, up, Down.



#define button1 10 #define button2 11 #define button3 12 #define button4 9 int val1; int val2; int val3; int val4; void setup() { Serial.begin(9600); pinMode(button1, INPUT); pinMode(button2, INPUT); pinMode(button3, INPUT); pinMode(button4, INPUT); Serial.println(" GB GoPro 360Mount"); } void loop() { val1 = digitalRead (button1); if (val1 == HIGH) { Serial.println("L"); } if (val1 == LOW) { Serial.println("X"); } val2 = digitalRead (button2); if (val2 == HIGH) { Serial.println("R"); } if (val2 == LOW); { Serial.println("X"); } val3 = digitalRead (button3); if (val3 == HIGH) { Serial.println("U"); } val4 = digitalRead (button4); if (val4 == HIGH) { Serial.println("D"); } delay(50); }



• Receiver
• For the receiver code I made it read the serial port and assigned a command to each letter received so if the L button is pressed it would turn the DC motor anticlockwise and vice versa



#include <Servo.h> int RelayPin1 = 10; int RelayPin2 = 9; Servo s1; int angle =120; int anglestep =1; void setup() { Serial.begin(9600); pinMode(RelayPin1, OUTPUT); pinMode(RelayPin2, OUTPUT); s1.attach(5); s1.write(angle); Serial.println("GB GoPro 360Mount"); } void loop() { while (Serial.available()) { char inChar = (char)Serial.read(); switch(inChar) { case 'X': digitalWrite(RelayPin1, LOW); digitalWrite(RelayPin2, LOW); break; case 'L': digitalWrite(RelayPin1, HIGH); digitalWrite(RelayPin2, LOW); delay(50); break; case 'R': digitalWrite(RelayPin1, LOW); digitalWrite(RelayPin2, HIGH); delay(50); break; case 'U': if (angle > 30 && angle <= 150) { angle = angle - anglestep; if(angle <30) { angle = 30; }else{ s1.write(angle); delay(50); } } break; case'D': if (angle >= 30 && angle <= 150) { angle = angle + anglestep; if (angle >150){ angle = 150; }else{ s1.write(angle); delay(50); } } } } }




Assembly

Finally the assembly process where I put all the 3D printed parts and ball bearings together and attached the electronics to them.



Safety First when transporting before full assembly





And the Final Result









---





Downloads



Fusion 360 design .F3D File

Mountcase Eagle .brd file

Mountcase Eagle .sch Schematic file

Remote Eagle .brd file

Remote Eagle .sch Schematic file

Bluetooth AT Config

Receiver Code

Sender Code





---